Basic Mechanisms Underlying Object and Word Identification in Complex Displays: An Embodied Approach

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The visual world rarely comes neatly pre-packaged into orderly snapshots fitting for a perceptual system rigid in its operation. Rather, the retinal image projected by the words and objects in our visual environment can vary considerably (e.g., in size, shape, orientation) from encounter to encounter. Nevertheless, we identify these items with seeming ease. Understanding how the perceptual system achieves this perceptual constancy will provide fundamental insight into human cognition. As such, much research has been devoted to this question; in particular, to understanding how individuals identify words and objects rotated away from their canonical orientation. However, almost all of this latter research has focused on understanding the identification of disoriented words and objects in displays with only a single item. Critically, our visual environments are rarely so simple. Thus, we need a deeper understanding of the basic mechanisms that enable our ability to identify disoriented words and objects embedded in complex multi-item displays. Research on the identification of disoriented words and objects has also concentrated almost exclusively on internal means of solving this perceptual challenge (e.g., transformations of mental representations). However, outside of the laboratory, individuals often use simple physical actions (i.e., external means) to facilitate perceptual and cognitive processing. This is also true in the context of attempting to identify disoriented words and objects. Specifically, when individuals encounter a complex rotated stimulus, they often physically rotate their body to approximate the orientation of the stimulus. We have argued (Risko et al., in press) that the use of action in this context represents a kind of cognitive offloading where people subvert the need to engage in effortful internal processing by physically manipulating their bodies (i.e., external processing). These types of behaviours are common in our day-to-day lives. Indeed, our ability to flexibly deploy internal processes and ad hoc mixtures of internal and external processes in pursuit of our cognitive goals likely represents a defining feature of what it means to be a successful cognitive agent in a complex environment. This strategy of using an action to facilitate information processing has begun to attract a great deal of attention with the emerging popularity of embodied approaches to human cognition. Nevertheless, we have a very limited understanding, from a basic science viewpoint, of this fundamental aspect of human cognition. My program of research will provide a deeper understanding of (1) the internal mechanisms underlying rotated word and object identification in complex multi-item displays and (2) the interaction between internal and external processes in that context. This research will move us closer to an understanding of the basic mechanisms that underlie cognition in complex naturalistic contexts. As such, this program of research can directly inform application, for example, the design of visual information displays. In addition, through a better understanding of how we use external means to aid cognition, this program of research can inform the development of strategies for improving cognitive performance in a range of settings. For example, recent trends suggest that person-technology integration (a common case of the integration of internal with external processes) is becoming an increasingly prominent part of Canadian’s lives, thus understanding how we use external resources to help us think will become increasingly important to our society’s future needs.